


Summer Storm

by MMXIII



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Anxiety, Because of Reasons, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Childhood, Chronic Illness, Consensual Underage Sex, Crossdressing, Declining Health, Domestic, Explicit Sexual Content, Gay Bashing, Gore, Internalized Homophobia, Kid Fic, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Mental Disintegration, OT3, Panic Attacks, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Poor Bucky, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Suicidal Thoughts, World War II, attack of the second person, its complicated..., sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMXIII/pseuds/MMXIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the end of a July like a switchblade, hot and slick and over too fast, when you finally found the courage to kiss him for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just gonna see how this goes :)

 

* * *

 

**Summer Storm**

* * *

 

 

_And in the end_

_I’d do it all again_

_I think you’re my best friend_

_Don’t you know that the kids aren’t alright?_

_I’ll be yours_

_When it rains it pours_

_Stay thirsty like before_

_Don’t you know that the kids aren’t alright?_

-          Fall out boy: The Kids Aren’t Alright

 

 

 

It was the end of a July like a switchblade, hot and slick and over too fast, when you finally found the courage to kiss him for the first time. You remember: you were lying side by side behind the couch in his Mama’s apartment after another day that'd started with a ‘gee Steve, you gotta see this’, and ended gently with an ever tactful ‘let’s take it easy, huh? I’m beat anyhow’. 

You were twelve years old and already half in love and the building was breathing around you in fractured conversation as you leaned in and pressed a chapped, closed kiss to the flushed skin of his cheek. You were giddy with it. You remember that too, tingling in the very ends of your small fingers.

He’d crinkled his nose gently and said: ‘whatcha wanna be doin’ that for?’ in that way that he had back then, loose and easy.

And you’d lain back down on the cool hardwood floor and tugged at your shirt, pulling it away from the hot tacky skin of your stomach, and shrugged and breathed and said:

‘Just tryin’ it out is all’.

You remember thinking, in the slow seconds that followed, that maybe he didn’t know what your Ma told you: that kisses were like little _thank yous_ that you gave to people. Ones they could carry around with them. Special people. People like him.

But then he’d rolled over onto his stomach until your whole bodies were flush and turned his face into your shoulder and closed his eyes and said:

‘S’kinda nice’.

 

You remember how he'd looked then, hands behind his head, elbows stuck out like a little kid's. Scrawny, but filling out in ways that you weren’t. Ways you'd thought you might never. And how you'd noticed the way his shirt was darker under the arms; saltwater in the afternoon air. You’d been thinking maybe it would be nice to touch him, press the backs of your fingers to the damp, tapered triangle at the front of his shirt.

He’d always been tactile: two fingers resting against the soft inside of your elbow, an arm thrown over your shoulders.

And later, his nose against the tacky hollow of your throat, his cheek warm against the inside of your thigh, his hand, his _hands_ -

 

 

At fourteen Bucky’d kissed you up against the sink in your Ma’s kitchen, full on the mouth and like he meant it. The summers seemed longer then, weeks and weeks when your lungs were as full as your heart.

He’d had a damp dishcloth over one shoulder and two buttons missing on his shirt. You’d still been holding a scuffed-up dish, fingers wet and webbed with pearlescent bubbles.

You’d said: ‘What’re you doin’?’ Because he was always taking you by surprise, and felt his mouth curl against your cheek: a smile. He’d waited for a moment, for the drowsy hum of insects just beyond the lip of the window, the whisper of running water, the muffled sound of kids playing in the street:

‘Just tryin’ it out’

Your heart’d thrummed hummingbird-crazy in your paper-thin chest, skin flushed right down through your collar to the place where his hands rested against your lower back. 

And you could’t breathe - metaphorically speaking, breathless at the sight of Bucky’s plush smile curling at the soft creased corners of his mouth, at the feel of his fingers sliding down your arm to the place where you were still clutching the plate with tremulous fingers.

‘Gotta finish this first, huh’, he’d said, or something like it, real quiet, real easy, and still smiling, taking the dish from you to dry.

‘Promised your ma’.

 

He used to promise your Ma all sorts of things.

 

You remember: you’d get beat up behind the corner drugstore; two teeth, three teeth, loose and wet with blood. And once, a loss: a grotesque pearl in the palm of your hand.

You'd showed him and he didn’t smile. You remember.

Dirt; brick-dust; chain-link; your sorry, cut-up face in pools of oily standing-water.

 

And what else? Bucky: a bleary corona of dark hair blotting out a bright white sky.

And ‘…these days-’ spoken in exasperation as your eyes rolled back into your head, ‘…moutha yours is gonna get you…’

 

It'd taken you far too long to realize that Bucky knew your body far better than you did; you'd just ignored it.

It was Bucky who knew and loved the crooked shape of your spine, the limp, bruised flowers of your lungs, the asymmetry of your senses: sight, sound.

Knew what was too much, what wasn’t enough.

You’d spent days curled on your side in bed, always the same side in favour of your good ear and never given a thought to the fact that, by the time you were eleven, you already had a side of the bed, and Bucky had his.

 

At fifteen you were still young, and always fighting something and Bucky’d say: ‘Steve’. Short and sharp like he wasn’t surprised.

And you’d grin broadly, as per usual, and then broader still when he’d wince at the blood bright between your teeth:

‘I said wait up’

‘Didn’t wanna’ you’d say, because when your lungs were working you felt like you could do anything.

‘I’m gonna die young’ he’d groan theatrically, clutching his chest. ‘And it’s gonna be all your fault’.

 

And back then- before. Before he-

 

Back then you’d laugh and wipe your bloody nose on the back of your hand because it was you who was gonna die first.

It was always gonna be you.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky'd always been on your side. Even when you weren’t. Even when you were hell bent on getting your face smashed in on every street corner in town. And you were hell bent for a long time. You remember.

You certainly never expected anything _else_ to be on your side, not your health, not the neighbourhood, not even god.

By sixteen you’d sat on a pew enough times to know that there was something wrong with you. Something bone deep. Something a thousand, thousand _Hail Marys_ couldn’t fix. And you’d been sure, terrified, that you were gonna take him down with you.

 

He never seemed to see it that way.

Father O’Doherty. Sister Maria. ‘They’re all fulla shit, Steve’.

 

You definitely hadn’t spared them a single thought when you’d fucked for the first time: not your priest, not god. Not even your mother who you think, by then, must have known.

 

You remember: Bucky pushing your shirt up, nosing his way down your hollow stomach, licking at your hipbones. Putting his mouth on you. Pressing his fingers inside you, slick, opening you up. Face boyish, eyes clear, hands steady.

You’d said: ‘Come on, Buck’ like you always did back then. _I wanna see. Let’s go. Come on. Faster._

And he’d rolled his eyes and smiled and said: ‘slowly for chrissakes. Why you always gotta rush me’

 

You remember: the feel of him sliding up into you for the very first time, different from every time after. Your head rolling back in the old blankets. Your mouth falling open. The blood thumping in your ears. Your fingers twitching in the short hair at his nape.

And his shoulder under the loose hinge of your knee. His cock thickening _inside you_. His hands, silent in visceral adoration.

 _‘Jeezus._ You’re so…’

You’d pushed your fingers through his sweet, sweat-dark hair, kissed his neck, his jaw, the side of his face. And he’d mouthed at your bird-like collar bone and whined into the tacky skin of your throat, shoulders broader at seventeen than yours ever should have been.

And even as your back was curling up of the thin mattress, you’d met him halfway, like always, and grinned loosely and said:

‘Shut the hell up. So- so’re you’.

You’d been able to feel him laughing, at the place where your bodies were joined. You remember.

And then the world had collapsed, filament white, into the places where he was touching you until you’d only been able to say his name, and after that, not much of anything at all.

He’d stayed inside you for a long time after, slippery, softening, and fallen asleep with one arm thrown over your waist, face tucked unceremoniously into your armpit.

 

 _Sweetheart_ , you'd thought, shy, like a secret. The warmest part of you- the _only_ part neither cracked nor covered in blood.

 

By the time you were half way through your frantic adolescence you’d needed both hands to enumerate your near-death experiences. You’d been a fighter, born and raised. The world made sense from the ring: faster, harder. You’d just keep pushing home.

 

You remember very little of the last time you really could’ve died, only light moving strangely across the ceiling of your room, and the burning sensation that’d seemed to consume every inch of your wasted body for what'd felt like days.

There’d been voices, your Ma’s and his, and then: strong arms lifting you away from stale sheets and laying you down gently in cool, shallow water. Steady hands bathing your tacky skin: a cloth moving gently over your chest, your stomach.

And his voice, Bucky’s, softer than you’d ever heard it:

_‘…these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they were just wild-’_

He’d paused and changed the way he was holding you. Kissed the side of your head, perhaps. Exhausted, you’d let your head rest limp against his shoulder, you remember that: you couldn’t see his face.

 _‘-and next’_  Bucky’d said,  _‘when it was just about the bluest and blackest – **fst!**  it was as bright as glory and you’d have a little glimpse of the tree-tops a-plunging about, away of yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second…’_

 _How did he know_ , you’d thought hazily, as your mind trailed off after the storm, that while your skin was burning and your tongue was swelling and cracking behind your teeth, you’d been dreaming of rain.

 

After that he’d started kissing you in front of your Ma, just your cheek or the top of your head. It used to make her smile.

 

She’d told you to be good to him; sharp as hell, your Ma. Maybe she saw it all coming, in her own way. She'd known what you were like, anyhow: stupid-stubborn and restless as hell. And trouble. Trouble from the day you could walk.

 

For the longest time, it was all about you, jacked up with adrenaline, bright and hot in your blood like cordite. Humming; thrumming. About proving everybody wrong. You never knew when to stop. So naturally, even with one near-death experience lingering in the not-so-distant past, it’d taken you all of two days to get into trouble again.

 

He’d put his hand on your arm, your shoulder, and said:

‘Walk away. Come on, pal. Let’s-’

 

(Since then you’ve wondered exactly how many times you ignored him. You certainly never followed his lead.)

 

‘ _Jesus,_  Barnes’ Tommy’d said, laughably taller than you, as most people were, and squaring up like he meant it. ‘What’re ya doin with  _him_?’

You’d been on the ground in record time, blood slick under your tongue, bubbling against your teeth, staining the edge of your mouth and the inside of your collar.

There’d been a lot of blood actually. Mostly yours.

 

Bucky’d broken two fingers breaking it up; your Ma had been furious.

Bucky hadn’t said anything at all.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotation in italics from Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn :)


	3. Chapter 3

 

You'd used to dream about swimming the East River. About air in your lungs and strength in the wretched, tender fibres of your body.

And all the years you'd spent curled up together, Bucky’d had dreams too.

 

‘I’m running’ he’d murmured in the dark, a long, _long_ way from home.

‘ _M_ _always running_ , not just fast but hard. I gotta keep going. Something’s wrong. Something’s…there’s…’

‘Hey’ you’d said, ‘hey, c’mere’ and curled your arm tighter around his waist, kissed his filthy hair. 

 ‘…you're on the ground. Just. Just laying there. And your face…’ 

_Your face was all smashed in._

 

 

 

Later.  _After_. You’d wondered if god had known. Known that Bucky’s life would always be too high a price. That you would have done  _anything_ ,  _a thousand stupid things_  to save him. That while he was alive, your priorities were best left unexamined.

 He would’ve laughed. You think (you imagine).

He would’ve said: ‘that’s real fuckin’ stupid’ and cuffed you lightly round the back of your head.

‘ _Jeezus, Steve_. You got  _any_  brains in there?’

 

 

By eighteen Bucky’d been working at a machine shop round the block and you’d realized that you weren’t gonna get any taller.

 

‘Air’s thinner up here anyway’ he’d say.

And you’d say: ‘ _God, Bucky_. Will you shut up?’

 

You’d done odd jobs mostly.

 

A series of hand-lettered signs for local stores:  _Open. Closed. Help wanted. No vacancies. Back at 2.30pm._  Real high-octane stuff. None of it strained your tissue-paper lungs, but  _still_  your body betrayed you. You’d get headaches from straining your eyes; sometimes your back was so sore you could barely sit to hold a pencil.

Bucky’d kiss your neck and tell you to lie down. Sometimes you’d listen. Mostly not.

Back then he used to come over in the evenings when your Ma was working shifts at the hospital and help you make dinner. Sometimes he’d fall asleep on the couch in his boots. Other times you’d end up curled together in bed in a nest of thinning woollen blankets, his head tucked carefully under your chin. He'd liked that, being held. You remember.

 

It was around then that he’d started worrying about people talking. He’d worked with some rough guys: closed minds, unforgiving hands.

In the end, you’d done what a lot of people like you must’ve done.

He’d gone out with girl after girl after girl. A whole parade of them. All beautiful and none of them the slightest bit interested in you.

 

‘People’re gonna- gonna talk-’ you’d say, flushed and panting, with your fingers fisted into the short hair at the back of his beautiful head. 

‘I’m as steady as they come’ he’d say, grinning up at you through his eyelashes.

‘Let ‘em'.

 

At nineteen, Bucky’d had thirty pounds on you and a hell of a lot more sense.

And somehow, it’d still taken you by surprise the first time he’d grabbed your collar and hauled you back from the edge of yet another stupid decision.

 

‘Are you  _crazy?_ ’ he’d said. ‘ _Jesus Christ, Steve_. They’re not just gonna knock you down.  _I know these guys_. They’re not good, alright? They're not-’

 

And you’d shrugged out from under his arm and scowled and said: ‘Jeez, Bucky. **Leave off**. I can look after my **goddamn** self’

 

 

 

 _I don’t think you want to_  he’d said once. Quiet like confession. 

Maybe you hadn’t.

 

You can’t explain it even now. Not really. Can't articulate just how it felt to have every fibre of your being clamouring for fire. For blood; your own, not somebody else’s.

Your Ma could smell it on you: your cut-up knees, the black dirt under your fingernails. Every day before school she’d catch your arm and straighten your collar and kiss your hair and make you promise to be safe, _willing_ the odds out of shape.

 

You miss her.

 

When a house burns down the place is still there, the space it took up on the ground, the shape of it in your Memory. You’d only been twenty years old for a week and a half when she’d died and it'd never gone away, the ache of her not being there.

 

 

After the funeral you’d woken to walls covered in years of sketchbook-drawings of a slight woman with a kind face and a fight in her eyes. There’d been a glass of water by your bed and two blankets that weren’t yours folded over you and the smell of your Ma’s chicken soup filling the room like sunlight.

You’d hauled yourself out of bed and pushed open the bedroom door and there he was: Bucky, standing over the stove with his sleeves rolled.

‘Watcha lookin’ at’ he’d said mildly and without turning his head.

 

You miss him too.

_God how you miss him._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had another look at this bc it was driving me crazy. Still is, but hey. Onwards. 16/1/15


	4. Chapter 4

About a month later you’d had to pack up your Ma’s place and move to a tiny apartment down by the train yard. When it rained the walls used to swell and stain and the whole place shook every time an engine went past. You’d kept your mother’s things in a box under the table and gotten a job drawing comics and advertisements for the newspaper.

Bucky’d taken a job down at the docks.

 

You’d been two boys in a shoebox and there were times when it drove you half-crazy, living out of one room and tripping over each other all the time. You’d fought a lot the first few weeks. Mostly about nothing at all.  

And every other evening you’d slip under the blankets behind him and say: ‘I’m an idiot’. 

And he’d turn over, warm and sleepy, and push his head under your chin like a goddamn cat and say: ‘Yeah, yeah. What’s new?’

 

At the weekends you used to sit up against him in bed as he read over your shoulder. He’d press his mouth to the bone behind your ear and say: ‘This is nice, huh’. And if there was anything to eat, you’d eat in bed while he told you about the latest gizmo that’d caught his eye in the papers that week. Sometimes he went out with friends. Sometimes he’d visit his mother.

 

In the winter the water used to freeze in the pipes and you’d wake up coughing under a pile of blankets with Bucky’s hand steady between you shoulder blades.

In the summer it was so hot the air used to writhe and curl coming off the train tracks and you’d fuck in the afternoon, real slow like burnt sugar, with the window open and a single sheet thrown over two mattresses pushed together on the floor.

 

_Lookit you, huh. Lookit you. Beautiful- always so-_

 

He always liked it slow. Everything he did was careful. Steady. Even when you had him bright eyed and breathless, cock twitching in your hand, he was making you _wait_. Making you _think_.

 

You used to draw him a lot right after. Always seemed like the best time. When neither of you felt like moving an inch. Sometimes he’d fall asleep, arm bent behind his head, hair curling in soft dark twists, cock slumped against the inside of his thigh.

 

You remember-

You remember that he was stupidly, _wretchedly_ handsome. That he used to walk like a boxer and talk like his mother wasn’t in town. That he’d come home and kiss the soles of your feet and sleep with your arm around his waist.

 

July through August he’d barely wear anything at all and you’d say: ‘Jesus, Barnes. Put some fucking clothes on’ and not mean a word of it. Not a fucking word.

All he’d have to do was smile at you sideways and you’d be fourteen again, realizing for the first time that the shape of his jaw made you _hard_.

 

Turned out living in sin was a lot like feeling alive. 

 

A couple of weeks after moving in, one of your neighbours had given Bucky a box of clothes her kids had grown out of, told him to pass on her daughter’s things to his sisters, and do what he liked with the rest. He’d gone through it in an evening and found a woman’s dressing gown. Loose blue silk. And torn across the back panel, right through the seams.

You hadn’t been paying much attention til he’d slipped it on over his undershirt and pulled you down on top of him. He'd been hard in his thin cotton shorts, blood-hot and swollen against your palm.

You don’t remember who reached for the tube of lipstick that somebody’d left in his coat pocket, only that he’d smiled hazily against the pads of your fingers when you’d pressed your thumb against the stained swell of his lower lip. That his mouth was plush and waxy under yours. That red didn’t have to mean blood.

 

And then, in April 1940, Bucky’d come home from Navy Yard smelling like standing water with black dirt under his fingernails and blood in his hair.

 

You’d learnt from Freddie Jones across the street three days later that some kid had been killed down by the docks by a bunch of guys:

_Small kid, y’know?. They kept yelling out about him bein’ queer and all and things got outta hand pretty quick. By the time Barnes saw and got to pullin’ ‘em off, the poor guy’s face was all smashed in. Y’know. Not much left._

Freddie’d flicked his cigarette and frowned but you’d felt sick, sick like you’d never felt before.

_Company’s writin’ it off as an accident or some shit. I never seen Barnes so cut-up about anything. He was yellin’ so what if the kid was queer, ain’t nobody’s business n it wasn’t him that was hurtin’ anybody. Boss told him to shut up and go home. Wasn’t lookin’ so good last I saw ‘im, shakin’ and what not. He bin drinkin’?_

 

‘Yeah’ you’d said, because he had been. Every night since.

 

‘Figures’ Freddie’d said philosophically. ‘Lotsa blood’.

 _Oh Buck_ , you’d thought, J _esus fucking Christ._

 

 

He’d been late home that night, feet heavy on the hardwood floor. And drunk. In an uncoordinated, maudlin sort of way.

‘Freddie told me’ you’d said, watching him carefully from across the room.

‘Toldya what, huh?’ He'd said, making a mess of untying his boots.

 

‘Where you been, Buck?’ you’d said softly.  

‘Joe’s’

‘The bar?’

‘No, the fuckin’ church, Steve’ he’d said. ’Bout time you turned in, isn’t it? I know you got work tomorrow’

 

‘It wasn’t me, Buck. I’m fine. We’re fine’.

He'd laughed sullenly and tipped his head back against the couch, closed his eyes. There'd been an angry red smear under his jaw.

 

‘Whole world’s going to hell', he'd murmured eventually. '‘S in the papers’

 

_‘Bucky-'_

 

‘Coulda been’ he’d said. With no heat. No- no nothing.

 

 

And then Pearl Harbour went up in flames.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Far from perfect but I'd rather press on!


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

You’d had scars on your hands from the day you could walk. A thin white line under your chin, another behind your ear. Couple of chipped teeth too. They’re must’ve been pieces of you all over the neighbourhood.

 

Bucky’d had callouses on the palms of both hands and an angry mark on his hip from half-dropping a crate that never quite went away. You remember the soft, desperate sound he made when you’d lave at it with your tongue.

It wasn’t there in Italy. Maybe that was how he knew.

 

You’d known he’d been thinking about his father. When the war came. You wonder, if he’d ever had the chance, whether he’d have looked much like George Barnes. Strong shoulders. Steady hands.

And his Mama’s eyes. _Blue, baby. Just like yours._

 

You’d been sick when he’d left for basic training. He’d found you on the floor by the table, barely breathing from the pain in your twisted back. You’d felt him walking over before you’d seen or heard him, head swimming thick and tired, his feet pressing down on the boards under your bruised fish-bone body.

‘Jesus, Steve’ he’d said, real gentle. Gentle like the down on his arms, the press of his mouth. And then: ‘gotta get you up off the floor, huh. Will you let me?’

You’d hated the way h'd knelt beside you because you didn’t want him to kneel for anything, spent you adolescence raging against anything that put a man on his knees. But when he slipped his fingers under the back of your neck and said _Stevie, will you let me_ , you’d blinked and turned your mouth against his wrist and said _yeah_.

The room had whirled in nauseating colours as he’d lifted you clean up off the floor and laid you down in bed like a new-born.

‘I gotta go’ he’d said, and you’d known from the way he’d said it that he was thinking about the next time. The maybe-for-good time.

‘No you don’t’ you’d breathed, dizzy and aching, and trapped his hand weakly under your cheek. You'd been thinking about the times when you’d had your foot halfway out the door and Bucky’d sat by your bedside and muttered his own _Hail Marys_ :

_You gotta stay with me. You promised. You gotta stay._

But it wasn’t you that was leaving. You didn’t know the words for that.

 

 

He'd come back sharper. Hungrier. Like somebody owed him something and he was sure as hell gonna get it back.

 

You remember the first time you saw him hurt somebody. Really hurt them. The body on the ground and the blood on his hands and the _don’t you touch him, don’t you ever fuckin’ touch him_.

‘I think’ you’d said, knowing the words had to be careful. ‘I think you broke his jaw’.

Bucky’d just locked his feet into the ground and rolled his left shoulder and frowned and said: ‘He was gonna hit you’.

‘Sure, but-’

‘Let’s just go’ he’d said, turning sharply to spit blood.

 

You'd stood by andwatched him put his minimal affairs in order. Twenty-four years old: average height and build, dark hair, light eyes.

Unmarried, Roman _fuckin’_ Catholic.

 

You’d known he’d been praying, those nights when you’d wake up to the shape of him sat up in bed. 

It hadn’t exactly been a secret - that he didn’t want to go.

You on the other hand-

 

You’d tried to enlist four times before it actually took. Opposite ends of town; different names. That fourth time you’d come home spitting with blood on your collar and another crumpled 4F fisted in your jacket pocket.

‘What are you doing?’ Bucky’d groaned: nothing made him fray around the edges like you did. ‘Can't you see it's- Look at me. You'll die. Steve, you'll die’.

 

You’d started to tell him to _leave it_ , that he didn’t understand, and then he’d kicked the nearest kitchen chair so hard it smacked against the wall and rattled the glassware in the sink.

 

He used to sing to you, when you’d yell at him for whistling. He used to smile so wide when you left him a handful of gutter-flowers on the table. He used to say _oh my god, Steve, I can smell the stupid from here_ and laugh. He used to laugh all the goddamn time.

 

 

‘You keep pushing me’ he’d snarled, with his knuckles splayed white on the table top.

‘ ** _Always fuckin’ pushing_** ’.

 

 

He'd stayed out for hours after, even though he'd left his coat over the arm of the couch.

 

You’d woken up later to the sound of him fumbling around in the dark and rolled over under the sheets to watch him unbutton his shirt, watch him watching you in the half-light that’d slipped through the shredded curtains.

 

‘I’m sorry’ he’d said, nuzzling under the sheets to meet you. Kissing your mouth.

‘No, it’s-’ you’d started, because it’d been your fault. Christ it was always your fault.

 

And then he’d turned over under your hands and drawn his knee up against the sheets, and you'd crawled over him until you were flush, kissed his neck, drunk on the soft sounds he was making, heart swollen with loving him.

 

‘Don't wanna talk’ he'd murmured, dropping his head and pushing his mouth into your open palm, teeth grazing the underside of your fingers. 'I dare you.'

 

‘ _Bucky-_ '

 

‘You wanna?’ he'd said, just like when you were boys.

 

You’d pushed into him slowly, carefully, _quietly_ , palm resting against the damp splay of his bare shoulder blades.He’d turned his head desperately and you’d leant down to kiss the side of his mouth, slackening under yours with every slight shudder of your hips.

‘That nice?’ you’d said, rapidly losing your grasp on extraneous reality at the feel of his muscles moving under his skin, at the hot clutch of his body around you, at the way he was saying your name, breathless and broken.

‘Yeah’ he’d rasped, ‘yeah it’s-. Fuck. Good. ‘S good’.

 

 

You’d linked your fingers together and tried to make him forget about the crisp papers on the table, the uniform folded over your one good chair, the too-short hair at the back of his head and realized that it hadn’t cost him anything. To do that. To roll over on his stomach and ask you to fuck him. He’d made up his mind a long time ago about what a man was and loved you the only way he knew how: with everything all at once. With a furious tenderness that filled him up til it burned right through him.

He was brave like that.

 

Too brave, maybe. In the end.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have taken so many liberties I've lost count.  
> Also thanks for reading :)

Funny thing about time. It's always running up and out simultaneously.

You’re older than you are and younger than you feel and so, _so_ heavy with all the memories that you wanna take back from history. The things that feel like yesterday but aren't:

 

The sound of your neighbourhood, the _smell_ of it: you’d had old Brooklyn brick-dust in your bust-up bones before you were even born. Maybe you still got it. Maybe. Maybe.

 

The press of your Ma’s palm over the crown of your head at one, at three, at ninteen. 

 

And then there was Bucky. Helping you up and laying you down. Still asleep on your right on a Saturday morning with his head turned into your shoulder, hair curling where it was longer and smelling of lilacs or roses or lavender.

 

He’d always slept heavier than you. Always woke slower. He never liked to talk right off but he’d kiss your shoulders if you had some time before work and run his hand lazily across your hip.

And you’d say: ‘when you gonna make an honest guy outta me, hmm?’

And he’d say: ‘mmmshutup’, catching his fingers against your hand, ‘msleepin’.

 

If you didn’t have time you’d get him in the evening while he was in the tub. Slip you hand between his legs under the soapy water and move your fingers around him until he was thickening in your hand, velvet soft, small gasps joining the click of the water pipes and the sound of Mrs Johansson from next door yelling at her kids.

‘Gonna miss you’ he’d say, with his hand damp against your nape and his head tipped right back against the edge of the tub. _Gonna miss you real bad._

 

The last morning before he'd left he’d had his face turned away from you towards the window and you’d stared at the nape of his neck, at the gentle intimation of tendon and vertebrae, and thought, **_for the very first time_** _,_ that there might’ve been things that he couldn’t do.

 

You were never the brains of the organization, that’s for sure. You only ever thought half a step ahead if you thought about anything at all. Maybe that was why him losing his mind was so wrong. You got by back home, and you certainly got pretty good at war, but Bucky’d always been so good at just being. He was all _don’t worry, baby_ , til you wanted to smack him round the head. You never did though.

All the time you’d been living on the back foot he’d been looking ahead. Working two jobs to keep you both alive. Always saving up for something. You remember how he’d talk about the future. Like it was a real place. Like it was somewhere the two of you were headed. You’d had nothing for years and years and he was always so excited about the goddamn future.  

 

He must've been so scared. Brooklyn. Azzano. 

Every damn day. And always looking forward.

Forward for things to st-

 

 

You remember when his niece was born. Rebecca’s baby. Annie.

You’d gone together, headed over to her place on that last Saturday morning. Bucky’d only kiss the corner of your mouth that week because you’d had a split lip. You remember-

You remember like it was yesterday. Rebbeca sat on her couch and Annie’s tiny feet in her hands and Bucky looking dazed and saying _jeez, Becca, she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen_.

And a slow fluid-in-your-lungs feeling that Bucky might want that. A little girl with soft, dark hair. There'd be a woman in the background with a hand on his shoulder and you'd be Uncle Steve who came by every other weekend for lunch. You can barely remember him ever looking as happy as he did then with his sister’s baby cradled up against him.

He must’ve seen it all on your face though because when Rebecca'd snorted and said _every girl’s the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen_  and made for the kitchen, he’d leaned right over with Annie against his shoulder until his mouth was catching the curl of your ear and said: _You know that ain’t true_.

 

You’d blushed right across your collar bones even though he was being earnest – he’d laughed about it afterwards, right before getting on his knees and drawing your slacks down the backs of your thighs.

 

You should have told him. You should have told him every day. That you loved him. That he was it for you. Fall through summer. For better, for worse.

But back then there were only bad words for what the two of you were doing. And time kept running down.

 

The night before he’d shipped out you’d gone to the Stark Expo with a pair of girls: he’d danced with them both and come home with you and let you nose against the little lipstick marks on his jaw and kiss the hinge just under his ear where the girls never got to and say _I got you, Buck. I always got you._

 

And then, before you knew it, he was standing in front of you in half his uniform looking more like a boy than he ever had since he was seventeen.

You’re saying ‘Be careful. Be safe’. He pulls the jacket on. The boots; the belt. And then he’s kissing you and it’s not gentle at all.

 

 _Please_ he’d said, looking around at the shared debris of your lives. At the stubbed pencils under the table and the blankets thrown over the end of your mattress. At the mirror that'd been cracked ever since you slammed the door and knocked it off the dresser. He’d left his hand resting on the back of your neck, thumb stroking up and down. Nothing ever felt as right as that. Just his hand on the back of your neck. His fingers would move over your skin saying _steady, huh? Easy, easy. We're alright._

There’d still been sketches of him on the walls the day you’d left. You’d taken it all over to Rebecca’s; four boxes of your stuff and one of your Ma’s. She’d watched you stack them up in the corner of the bedroom with Annie on her hip a week after you’d finally gone and done something Bucky’s good sense couldn’t undo.

 

‘He’ll be so mad’ she'd said. ‘He’ll be so goddamn mad’.

She'd meant it. Just like he had two weeks earlier when he'd said: _‘Jesus Christ, Please_ don’t do anything stupid ‘til I get back.’

You’d just looped the tie around his neck and kissed him again and said:

‘How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you’.

 

 

 You didn’t know much as a kid.

Only that you took what you were given. That you damn sure made the best of it. That he Bible had it all wrong; that the meek didn’t inherit shit. Your Ma fought for everything you had right up until she couldn’t fight anymore.

But you’d always had too much fight and not enough sense.

 

 

As it turned out, quite a lot of the stupid stayed behind.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been such a long time - I had several projects of a tedious and lengthy nature to attend to!  
> I had quite a lot of trouble separating this chapter from the next one (which, btw, is a veritable angst-fest...), mainly because I desperately wanted to give Peggy some attention :)  
> I may shake this up again, who knows...  
> Thanks very much for reading this far!

 

 

 

He was so young. You both were. Maybe that’s what you think about most. When you see kids walking around today hand in hand or smiling shyly at each other. Out in the rain or the sunshine. Just out. And happy. And if not happy then trying. Because whatever happens, you owe yourself your best shot.

That was a James B. Barnes classic. _Come on, Sweetheart, we got all the time in the world._

 

You’ll never forget the day he’d turned to you in the middle of a ruined burned-out chapel in northern France and said: ‘Stevie, will you marry me?’ With his mouth soft against your ear and a lick of dirt under his jaw and a sprig of pine needles tucked behind one ear.

And all the saints gazing down in perfect passivity like insects smeared over chalk.

 

 _If I gotta put my name to something-,_ he’d said, fever-warm and far too thin, fingertips fluttering at your nape.  I swear to god- _Stevie, I-_

 

You’d known what he was saying even then. That if he had to put his name to something, he wanted it to be _good_.

 

All he ever really wanted was a steady job and a place to lay his head. Something sweet to come back to when the sun went out over the stacks across the bay. Somewhere that was his.

 

_Yours._

 

To hell with the war, he’d said. If there was blood coming you were his favourite fight. Said he didn't always care to win. _  
_

_Will you marry me?_ He says, folded in your memory like a lost letter.

 

_You wonder when they took that from him: you smiling against his cheek at the sound of Gabe laughing warmly in the background. You kissing the corner of his mouth, right there for everyone to see saying:_

_James Barnes,_ _you sonuvagun._ _It’s about damn time._

 

 

The thing is. After Erksine-

The thing is it’d felt good. To win. To land a punch that actually took. To be the guy on his feet at the end of the day instead of the guy on his knees in the dirt.

Everything was so bright, so loud, so new, so _much_. And you’d been high on it. The air, thick, sweet and steady in your lungs. Your brain and your bones moving _together_.

 

You just weren’t paying attention.

You don’t know what you would’ve done without Peggy.

 

 

‘Tell him he’s an idiot’ Bucky’d say. ‘Tell him he’s the biggest goddamn-’

Peggy'd just smile and brush her fingers against his mouth, twist his hair where it curled against her thigh: ‘He does have a rather eclectique offensive technique’.

‘Yeah’ Bucky’d say, words pressed softly into Peggy’s open palm, ‘real fuckin’ electric. Why’d they put his dumb ass in charge?’

 

You never had to explain it to her, she just took it as it was. That you loved her. That you loved him too.

She’d look at you the same way Bucky always had: like she knew you were an idiot. Like she’d already forgiven you for whatever it was you were about to do next.

She used to look at him so softly it’d make your chest  _ache._

 

And when he used to look at you-

 

‘What did they do to you?’ he’d rasped, stumbling. Half-dazed, half-terrified. Eyes blue, black, and bloodshot.

 

Head bent _far_ too close to yours.

_You gotta tell me_. Over and over: _What in hell did they do?_

He’d never told you what they did to him. You’d thought at the time that he didn’t want to. But _now_. Now you realize he probably hadn’t even known.

 

And when you’d explained:

 

‘You’re on your own for five minutes’ he’d snarled. ‘ _Five goddamn minutes_ and you-’

‘Ten days actually, I-’

‘-fuckin’ stupid no good _idiot_ son of a-’

‘Buck-’ you’d hushed, ‘It’s-’

‘-no that ain’t fair to your Ma-’

‘ _Bucky_ -’ you’d protested, new and whole and so fucking stupid. Not seeing that things were different. That he was different.

 

After you’d told him, for long enough that it mattered, maybe a half-second or so, you’d actually thought he was gonna hit you. Bucky, who used to press his mouth to each of your no-good ribs like a poem.

 

‘Do you have _any idea_ -’ he’d said, curling his fingers tightly to his palm.

You still don’t. Not really. You can’t even say you’d take it all back.

 

‘I’m not sorry’ you’d said.

Maybe you are now. But not for that.

 

In the end he’d forgiven you (out of habit presumably) and in a funny way it’d been just like home. Bucky looking over your shoulder, watching for trouble.

You running ahead like a fool, nothing to lose and losing that too.

 

And Peggy. Stroking his hair and kissing your nape and saying _boys, do be careful won’t you, I’ve grown rather fond of you both._

 

You’d thought maybe.

When it was all over. When everything was alright.

You’d live together. Just the three of you and nobody paying no mind. Peggy coming home from the office and kissing you both on the cheek. Bucky painting the lounge or sanding down a new shelf or sleeping on the porch in the sun. 

 

Whether he was bathing you out of your fever dreams or fucking into you, hot and slick and slow. You were _his_. Bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. You would’ve held him like an oath, honest to god. Safe and sound and anyway you knew how. You would’ve done anything.

 

But Peggy saw what you couldn’t-

What you _wouldn’t_ see:

At twenty-four years old you were more alive than you’d ever been in your entire, _wretched_ life, and Bucky-

 

_Jesus Christ-_

 

You **_asked_** him to stay.

 

 

 


End file.
